Leadership in Times of Uncertainty

By Daniela Dinar

There has never been a situation like this. A quarter of the world’s population under lockdown. Trillion-dollar stimulus packages. Entire sectors screeching to a standstill overnight, with no clear signs of when things will recover. Those of us who weathered previous financial crises know this pandemic could bite deeper and last longer than anyone can predict. All we know for sure is we haven’t hit the bottom yet.

But we can’t sit and wait for clarity. Business leaders across all companies and sectors need to figure out how to confront these challenges, all while life is being redefined every day. We need to adapt, and act quickly. But what does good leadership look like in such uncertain times?

First, I need to rip the band-aid off: This article isn’t going to provide a surprising leadership hack that makes all those problems go away. Or suggest this is a blessing in disguise. This will be hard. Many companies won’t survive, even with strong leadership.

There is no quick fix, no one-size-fits all solution. Success will depend on your company, your team, your resources. On your resilience and mindset. There will be agonizing decisions to make.

But difficult isn’t the same as impossible, and uncertainty — even extreme uncertainty — isn’t the same as knowing nothing. There are many things we can all do to minimize risk, support our teams and ensure businesses come out of this stronger and more resilient than ever before.

Last week I gave a webinar outlining my leadership strategies for dealing with this pandemic, including things I’ve learned from previous financial crises and from working closely with CEOs and founders over many years. Here are ten key takeaways which I think can benefit everyone. None of these are rocket science — they’re all versions of what good business leaders should be doing anyway. But they take on new dimensions and importance during this crisis.

#1: Decide Now

A crisis involves many unknowns and surprises. A wrong move can feel dangerous, even fatal. This can be paralyzing, but you need to rouse yourself and your team to action. Resist the temptation to do nothing and wait for clarity. The data you need may come too late, or never come at all.

The harsh reality is that deferring a decision is still a decision, and almost always a bad one. You need to act now, before circumstances narrow your options even further.

WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme Executive Director Dr. Mike Ryan put this perfectly in a widely-shared except from his press conference on March 14th: “[T]he problem in society we have at the moment is everyone is afraid […] of the consequence of error. But the greatest error is not to move. The greatest error is to be paralyzed by the fear of failure.”

#2: …But Be Ready to Adapt

Making the tough decision is just the beginning. You can’t rest on your laurels. Or worse, be fixated. If new information contradicts your plan, change it. Adapting is a sign of strength, not weakness.

Leaders are used to making plans, setting targets, and evaluating progress on a quarterly or yearly basis to make adjustments. That core logic is still sound, but the timeframes need to be massively reduced in a crisis.

Revise your targets and timelines and communicate them clearly. Make sure they’re realistic, even if they’re a far cry from last year’s targets or even last weeks. There’s no shame in having modest targets during a crisis. Many businesses will be forced to shift focus from “How do we thrive?” to “How do we survive?” This can be scary, but it’s better to be transparent than present false optimism. That’s how you lose the trust of your team and reserved productivity.

#3: Step up And Lead

In times of uncertainty people want to know their leaders are taking charge. This is NOT the same as having all the answers. Your teams understand that there is uncertainty and rapid change. They understand there may be no truly good options for a while, only less bad ones.

You need to be brutally honest about what is achievable. Keep people focused on an achievable plan that they understand clearly. People need to see you are minimizing risk and seeking every opportunity to improve and succeed.

You need to demonstrate grit and resilience. People look to their leaders for cues on how to handle a situation, and they’ll pick up on negativity even if you’re not communicating this directly. If you’re nervous and withdrawn, they will be too. The psychologist Daniel Goleman calls this “emotional WiFi”.

People often find it difficult to handle difficult news and situations. Survival mechanisms kick in, including denial, procrastination, and fake optimism. Leaders aren’t immune here, and it’s important to push through and model the behaviour you want to see in your team. You need to reach a balance between being optimistic but realistic, focused and resilient, confident but humble.

#4: Communicate!

I’ve seen many leaders whose response to a crisis is to communicate very little or not at all. This would be disastrous now, especially when so many people are working remotely. People need to feel connected and engaged, or they’ll lose focus.

Transparency is the most important thing during a crisis. Be clear about what you know, what you don’t know and what you are doing to learn more. Thoughtful, frequent communication shows that you are on top of things and are adjusting to what happen.

#5: Develop Two Mindsets in Parallel

Develop two mindsets in parallel. Constantly collect data and information, and make decisions. At the same time revise, recheck, and prepare for different outcomes.

Leaders who can conceive of various scenarios in parallel cope much better in times of uncertainty. The best way to prepare yourself and your team is to work on scenarios ahead of time. The more prepared you are, the less surprised you will be if things go wrong. In his book, Smarter, Better, Faster, journalist Charles Duhigg explains how mental models can help teams navigate a crisis.

What would your business need to look like if this crisis came to an end after three months? How about if it’s still dragging on after nine? Can you organize your teams and processes so they would succeed if either scenario came to pass? What would that look like? If you can’t cover every situation, what would you need to know to decide which plan to adopt? What data would you need and how would you get it? By envisioning different possible scenarios, and planning different responses for all of them, you’ll be making sure that you and your team are as ready as possible for however this crisis develops and not get into a cognitive tunnel (in-attentional blindness ) which impacts the quality of your decision making.

This is a dynamic mix between planning and being flexible. You can’t be too rigid, because no-one knows how this will play out. But you’re also not just figuring out everything as you go along, always on the back foot. It’s about being proactive, not reactive.

#6: Be Agile…

You need to collect information as the crisis unfolds and continually observe how you respond and how effective it is. You need to frequently pause, assess the situation, anticipate what may happen and act.

This situation is unprecedented. Now is the time for radical solutions. A lot of things we thought were certain about business and leadership may no longer be true. Don’t throw out everything that’s worked for you and your team before, but do question whether the received wisdom is still true in the current crisis.

There’s a useful process cycle called the OODA loop, developed by a Colonel in the US Air Force. ODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Repeatedly applying this loop allows you to keep making decisions quickly while still course correcting when necessary.

Your situation may be changing too fast to set long-term targets, or even think beyond the end of next week, but you can still lay the groundwork for flexible decision making.

…But Remember the Fundamentals

As I stressed at the beginning, there is no one-size-fits all solution to this crisis. If you’re using this advice as a shopping list to avoid the hard work of working out your specific business needs, it won’t work. Still, there are some fundamental steps which almost every business will need to take over the coming days, weeks, and months.

The most obvious effect of the crisis is a massive reduction in demand and therefore revenue. Unless you’re lucky enough to run an online grocery delivery service or hand sanitizer factory, you’re going to see a huge drop in short-term revenue, maybe even to zero. At the same time, most business expenses aren’t going anywhere.

So you need to preserve cash. There’s been a mindset over the past decade or more, especially for companies who have just completed a big Series A round, of moving fast, embracing a high burn rate, and pushing the consequences down the road. That needs to change. Reduce costs immediately and find creative ways to ensure business continuity. Expect the worst. In fact, cut more than you need and faster than you need to. Making cut after cut over the coming months will erode confidence and dissolve any sense of progress.

If you’re relying on future fundraising, it’s time to adjust your expectations (there will be limited access to funding). Use this time to craft your pitch and ensure you will be stronger when this crisis ends: optimize your product, your service, your value proposition.

Times are scary, but there are still opportunities. Make sure to use any opportunity for PR, to push content, to better serve clients.

#7: Embrace the Slowdown

Many businesses are going to suddenly find themselves with an excess of an often-neglected resource: time. Can you turn this enforced downtime into an opportunity?

What were you always putting off because everything was moving at a mile a minute? Now is the time to work on improving processes and training, crystallizing your core values and value proposition, shoring up documentation, and reorganizing and restructuring.

Even in the most dynamic and flexible workplaces, a lot of employees won’t have tasks to fill their days. Now is a great opportunity to get feedback and ideas from them, to train them, to experiment with giving people different kinds of tasks and seeing who rises to the challenge. Set people research tasks, analysis tasks, data gathering tasks. Ask them to identify strengths and weaknesses in your business and solicit ideas on how to solve any problematic areas.

Engage with team members you wouldn’t normally have time to engage with, to see what you can learn about parts of your company that are less visible to you when things are running at full tilt. Use this time to improve and prepare so that when things start to return to normal, everyone is operating at maximum productivity and you can hit the ground running.

#8: Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

You can’t do everything on your own and your managers can’t either. This isn’t just a business truism: the very nature of this crisis is going to constrain what you can personally get done. Travel is restricted, and teams will be short-handed as and when people get sick. Everyone is going to have to learn to work in a more remote and decentralized way. That means more delegation.

Make sure you empower the right leaders, but also be prepared to have your expectations subverted. Business experience is still relevant, but be on the lookout for who is dealing with this crisis well: who is calm and realistic? Who is focused, agile, resilient, but not afraid to show vulnerability? You may need to adjust your usual delegation processes to optimize for this. Give people the opportunity to step up and impress you and reward them when they do.

#9: Take Care of Your Team

Remember that all business success and failure is ultimately down to people. You can’t take care of everybody, yet you need to take care of your leadership team.

Studies have shown (project Aristotel — Google research) that the highest performing teams have one thing in common which is psychological safety. Which is about giving candid feedback, openly admitting mistakes and learning from each other (Amy Edmondson).

In times of crisis, the most successful teams are the ones with the highest levels of trust. The ones who work in alignment and take ownership of their successes and failures. The ones who feel confident that they can rely on each other and share when they’re facing difficulties.

In a crisis, people narrow their focus to survival and basic needs. Leaders need to pay attention to how their people are doing and do their best to support them. By being interested, checking in on the team, listening, requesting and giving candour feedback and showing vulnerability. People are going to need time to adjust to working from home, what are you doing to help them adjust? If you have young employees, this may be the first time they’ve experienced a crisis. People are going to be anxious and confused. Some of them are going to become ill. Be patient and supportive.

#10: Look After Yourself

Being a leader is challenging even during the good times. Stress, fatigue and uncertainty build up during a crisis, and leaders can bear the brunt of this. Even if you’ve followed the communication and psychological safety advice from earlier, and you’ve built a resilient and supportive team, you still have to pay extra attention to your own wellbeing. No one else will do it for you.

There’s an unhealthy culture in certain parts of the business world: a perverse badge of honour for leaders who push themselves to their limits and don’t show weakness, who embrace stress and push through discomfort, who artificially ramp things up so everything seems like a crisis. But this is stupid and reckless, and completely unsustainable in times of genuine crisis. Stress affects your ability to process information and maintain energy levels and optimism. It affects decision making. Ultimately it harms your health.

The solution isn’t complex, although it can be hard: open up to colleagues, talk to people you trust. Eat well, exercise, take walks, maintain enough sleep. Take regular time off, especially as the crisis threatens to erode our sense of weekly structure.

Ask for help. Share what you’re going through with family and friends. Most importantly, be specific about how people can help: leaders are often so caught up in their own heads that they forget their problems aren’t obvious to the outside world. If you don’t ask for what you need, people won’t know to give it to you.

I hope these tips will prove useful to you as you try to steer your businesses through this crisis. It’s going to be a challenge, but the best leaders rise to challenges and they and their businesses emerge stronger.

This is the time to change priorities and strategy. Focus on what you can control, be creative, seize opportunities and develop a mindset of openness to change and agility. Pay close attention to communication, clarity of goals and vision and make sure you maintain your team relationships.

Above all, stay caring and humble.

Daniela Dinar is an executive coach and a leadership development HR consultant who has helped numerous companies in Target Global’s portfolio through times of both growth and challenge.